Welcome to the Flaming Faggot

Callovia is called "the boundless empire" yet you have managed to find its northern border - a notorious roadhouse deep within the Madrasan Marches on the edge of the wilds of Llanvirnesse. The sign above the door reads "Flaming Faggot," which would suggest a cozy, homey inn with fresh biscuits served at teatime if not for the severed troll heads mounted on pikes at the gate.

As you cross the threshold the raucous din quiets momentarily as all eyes dart to the door and calloused hands drop instinctively to well-worn sword hilts. The threat, instantly assessed, is dismissed and roadhouse patrons go about their business hardly missing a beat.

Grim, hard-eyed men huddle around tables in close conversation thick with conspiracy; caravan guards gamble away their earnings; Caemric rangers sit close to the fireplace cooking the damp of the Black Annis from their clothes as they warm their innards with Red Dragon Ale; minstrels play and buxom wenches dance for the pleasure of men who pay them little attention - until they need a companion to warm their bed.

As you approach the bar, a huge, bald barman with a greatsword slung across his back slides a mug of freshly-pulled ale towards you, its frothy head dripping over the rim.

"Pull up a seat, lad," he says, "and let me tell you a tale of high adventure."

Monday, October 4, 2010

Weird Wonder: Andrewsarchus

One of the largest predatory mammals ever to have walked the earth, Andrewsarchusmongoliensis, named for explorer Roy Chapman Andrews, lived during the Eocene Epoch of the early Tertiary Period 34-56 million years ago.

The species is known only from a single fossil skull discovered in the Gobi in 1923 by a member of the American Museum of Natural History's famous Central Asiatic Expedition.

Although its exact size is uncertain, it is estimated that the animal probably massed about 1,000 kg (~2,200 lbs) and probably would have made a pack of dire wolves look like a litter of puppies. Obviously, because of the lack of fossil specimens, little is known about the palaeoecology of Andrewsarchus, and it is unknown whether it hunted singly or in packs or whether it subsisted entirely by predation or was a scavenger as well. In my experience, however, like graduate students, few predators will pass up a free meal, and it is likely that Andrewsarchus scavenged when it could and hunted when it needed to. Its large jaws supported powerful muscles and it could easily have crushed bone, and it has been suggested that it preyed mainly upon brontotheres - enormous mammals related to horses and rhinoceroses.

Fighting over a baby brontothere

Andrewsarchus will remain largely a mystery until new fossil specimens are found to fill in the missing gaps in our knowledge, but until then reconstructions such as this will give us our best picture of what this enormous beast must have looked like - certainly not something I'd want to run into on a dark night.

Naturally, anything that I wouldn't want to run into on a dark night is something that I definitely want to add to my campaign, because what adventurer worth his salt doesn't love running into dangerous things on dark nights?

Sarks roam the plains of Lemuria, hunting singly or in mated pairs. They are vicious and difficult to manage, but they are sometimes captured and trained as mounts by savages of the Lemurian steppes. The sark's bone crushing bite is so powerful that 3d6 are rolled for damage, and the lowest two scores discarded.